I know, I know. You have been waiting impatiently for this list. You have cursed Waterloo for making this a 2-stage opening week. You have cursed Toronto and Windsor for their evening game. You had to satisfy yourself with watching the CFL's Greatest Team soundly defeat the Aggros. Your patience is about to be rewarded.

It will take at least one more week to put week #1 into context. Taking margins of victory into account, one has to put Regina ahead of Calgary. (Even though I very much believe that will change.) Simon Fraser looks to be cellar-dwellers, don't they?

Thus far only Toronto and York have full-fledged jabroni status. Of note, Guelph and Windsor are hereby declared to be ham-n-eggers. That means they could become jabronis or move into the blob any time.

You will note Waterloo's presence. Why not include them? They are supposedly only “suspended” for one year. And unless York improves, I think they'll finish 9th, or even 8th, in the conference. Maybe their inclusion here will assure them of returning.

Now, on to the non-jabronis. What a bizarre set of results. The Urban Cowboys were crushed by Saskatchewan. Ottawa were obliterated by Sherbrooke. So, maybe they just aren't as good as McMaster, Laurier, or Queen's. Not quite. McMaster beat 'em both in close games. So the same Laurier team to be crushed by the Urban Cowboys (those who were crushed by Sask and lost to an Ottawa team steamrolled by Sherbrooke) could easily have beaten The Big Macs. So, in sum, these 5 teams all look like they belong in The Blob. Perhaps Ottawa's result against Sherbrooke and Laurier's result against the Urban Cowboys will be viewed as their “Mulligan” once the season unfolds. Time will tell.

The Q teams racked up big wins against the O in pre-season and so it seems that the conference is uniformly strong as expected. McGill lost their jabroni status last year so Laval's thumping of them has to impress. I gave Sherbrooke the nod over Concordia basically due to their margin over Ottawa. Otherwise, the teams are tightly bunched and subject to significant change in coming weeks.

NOTE: The AUS teams will join the rankings next week once their teams have played. To help everybody understand the rankings, I have compiled this handy reference so that you can see who beat whom. Of course, in time it is hard to blend all chains without generating inconsistencies. For example, A will beat B, B will beat C, and C will beat A. In that case a team would be ranked behind a team they have beaten. For now, that need not happen.
Laval > York
Laval > McGill > Toronto
Concordia > Guelph > Toronto > York
Concordia > Bishop's
Saskatchewan > W. Ontario > Laurier
Saskatchewan > Calgary > Alberta > UBC
Montreal > Sherbrooke > Ottawa > W. Ontario > Windsor > Toronto
Regina > Manitoba
McMaster > Queen's
McMaster > Laurier

DoubleBlue wrote:Regina, Sherbrooke, Alberta, Concordia. Something's messed up in the calculations. No respect for OUA. The Rams victory over Bisons certainly doesn't catapult them into the top 5.

Don't understand the inclusion of SFU & Waterloo. Is it a joke? Why not include Carleton & Dalhousie as well?

The OUA had a problematic non-conference season this year, going 0-5 with one-sided losses across the board. One of their pre-season favourites, Ottawa, losing 41-0 to Q league also-rans Sherbrooke had to raise eyebrows. (BTW, Ottawa beat them in the 2009 pre-season.) Right now, only McMaster has an unblemished record.

As for SFU and Waterloo, why not leave them in just for fun? SFU can face the inglorious position of being last every week. And without playing, Waterloo could still out-perform York.

Mac should be ranked highest since they didn't play a pre-season match? The pre-season is of course interesting since we do have few opportunities to compare conferences but being pre-season and with OUA having few training days before playing and few days before opening season, they count for even less than even a normal pre-season game would.

SFU doesn't belong in the CIS and no longer belongs in the same thread as Canadian football.

While everybody figures that after this week's results a lottery might work best, the OHT27 has made sense of it all and things pretty much fall into place. Of course, the AUS makes no sense and a case can be made to put their four teams virtually anywhere.

It should also be remembered that places 3-16 are mili-rankings apart and those teams could experience major shifts next week.

When a pile of teams are tightly bunched one would think the rankings could be all over the map. However, these rankings surprisingly fell into shape quite nicely. The only result not consistent with these rankings is the non-conference win by Calgary over Alberta.

The OUA surprisingly falls into place quite nicely as well. There are NO results which are inconsistent with these rankings. Windsor got themselves a reservation at Hotel Jabroni. Toronto's wipeout put them below Waterloo.

This week's results warranted no shift in the Q rankings. But the A?!?!?!?! Could it be jabroni-free? Or is it Jabronis Unanimous? If ever the OHT27 needed an interlock weekend, this is it. Feel free to disagree with my AUS rankings.

Enjoy reading these. Still think you place too much emphasis on meaningless pre-season games. How can you justify putting Sherbrooke at number 7 in the country and ahead of Concordia and Bishop's in QUFL?

This is one crazy season in the CW. What strikes me as odd is the amount of one-sided games so far. The other thing is that these rankings render only one game as an odd-ball, that being Saskatchewan's opening night win over Calgary. Otherwise, every game is totally consistent with these rankings.

In addition, I looked at each group of 3 tied teams. Logically, the 2-1 teams would have to be ahead of the 1-2 teams.

Calgary beat Alberta and Regina, and Regina and Alberta have yet to play. But they both have wins over Manitoba and losses to Calgary. The difference is that Alberta also beat UBC, Regina also beat Saskatchewan, and UBC beat Saskatchewan. So Alberta gets the nod for 2nd.

Of the 1-2 teams, Manitoba beat UBC who beat Saskatchewan, and Manitoba and Saskatchewan have not played. So those 3 also fall into order, and there's your CW rankings, the same by either method.

The OUA has fallen into place. And the 9 teams now neatly fall into 3 groups of 3, with 3 teams in The Blob, 3 ham-n-eggers, and 3 jabronis. No result so far in consistent with these rankings.

This week's manhandling by the Q of the A mirrored the pre-season manhandling by the Q of the O. I have to remark how disappointed I was with Queen's performance against Guelph. Right now the conference is being dominated by teams who were picked to shreds by average to below average Q and CW teams.

And in the Battle of the Big Lemon, aka The Jabroni Bowl, we all have to congratulate Toronto for beating York. I bet Yonge Street is going nuts tonight.

The men defeated the boys this weekend. I guess one cannot be disappointed by Acadia and Mount Allison losing away. McGill's close losses to Bishop's and now Concordia suggest some upward potential from them. So the Q, for the first time, has places #1 through #6, and the A gets places #7 to #10. So while the A has no jabronis, they are all ham-n-eggers.

We'll have to see how the A teams do against one another to see who can move into The Blob. In fairness to them, their results now are strikingly similar to those achieved by Western Ontario, Ottawa, and Guelph against similar opposition in the pre-season.

One other factor affecting the rankings is that being whupped by Laval does not cost a team. It does not strain my imagination to see them beating any team I have seen by 30 points.

Finally, after having Sherbrooke ahead of Concordia by a nose I now have Concordia ahead of Sherbrooke, also by a nose. Sherbrooke could use more games against mid-rank opponents and then this could change yet again.

NOTE: To help everybody understand the rankings, I have compiled this handy reference so that you can see who beat whom. So far it is only necessary to have one result which is out of synch with the rankings, that being Saskatchewan's win over Calgary.

The approximate half-way mark has now been reached. So the OHT27, already the most authoritative ranking in CIS football, becomes even MORE authoritative from here on in. In fact, I have it on good authority that Elle McPherson is very impressed with this week's ranking.

Impressive!

For past reference check OHT #1, OHT #2, and OHT #3. It is always useful to see the wisdom unfold over time.

Using the “who beat whom” system, every team is consistent with these rankings except for ... Saskatchewan! They lost to UBC and beat Calgary. Those are the only two “oddball” results thus far.

Of concern is the number of one-sided games so far this year. This week there were once again two blow-outs. The exception was the 26-25 Calgary win over Manitoba. I tend to think that the teams are settling in to where they belong. The big question will be “Where does Sask belong?”I suspect that they will recover and challenge Calgary for the top 2 places, that Regina and Manitoba will settle in to 3rd and 4th, and then Alberta and UBC will be pesky 5th and 6th place teams. But for now the standings are what the standings are and the ratings speak for themselves.

In reading the debate about the hype for WO v Guelph it dawned on me that in fact this IS a down year for the upper echelons of the OUA. Which of last year's top 5 claim to be an improved side this season? NONE! So that would explain why their non-conference results were down from last year's.

So Ottawa stays top-of-the-heap with luke-warm results against mediocre teams and everybody else stays in their rut. Ottawa, WO, and McMaster are within “the blob”, along with the CW and most of the Q. Guelph, Queen's, and Laurier still look like ham-n-eggers, and Windsor, Toronto, and York continue to define jabroniism. Thoise three teams are a combined 0-7 against non-jabronis and non-ham-n-eggers this year.

So, where do we go with the A? Acadia and Mount Allison are both 2-0 against SMU and SFX. Their wipeouts against the Q mean that the best they can be is a ham-n-egger. So where does that leave SMU and SFX? Since SFX put up a decent battle with Montreal I shall spare them a jabroni-watch. SMU is a different story. Their punishing loss to Laval is not enough, because lots of blob teams would have suffered the same fate. But too many losses to a ham-n-egger raises questions.

In the Q it is clear that #1, #2, and #6 are taken. However #2=#4 are more confused now that Bishop's and Concordia have split. Sherbrooke is still hard to rate because all their losses are against Montreal and Laval. Those three could be in any order.

NOTE: To help everybody understand the rankings, I have compiled this handy reference so that you can see who beat whom. The game results which do not fit re UBC over Saskatchewan and Saskatchewan over Calgary.

The rankings show each team's conference record followed by their overall record. The games marked # are non-conference games. The games marked * are games against a jabroni. ^Laurier's win over Toronto was reversed.

Those crazy, kooky Huskies looked like world-beaters once again. This really throws the CW for a ratings loop. Regina is hard to see as a real contender. Manitoba could have beaten them but in the end execution won. The question is can they continue to get so much mileage from their talent? Anyhow, no CW can be ranked ahead of them right now, and they are not good enough right now to be considered a "contender".

Oddly, Manitoba would still make the playoffs with an away win over Alberta and a home win over UBC if Calgary beats Alberta OR if Calgary loses to Alberta and UBC beats Sask, i.e. the 3-way tie.

Alberta joins the ever-expanding group of ham-n-eggers. UBC is the only ham-n-egger to have defeated a blob team all year. This is somewhat unusual. In fact, there have been an unusually high amount of thumpings this year.